Episode 34 - Crossing the Vaal and a Finishing Touch in Mafeking

The ongoing march north by Lord Robert’s army continues, and also swing around to Mafeking just before Plumer’s relieving force arrives because the Boers have a surprise in store for the towns’ commander in chief, Lord Baden-Powell. The British had accomplished half their journey to Pretoria, and it was obvious that on the south side of the Vaal no serious resistance awaited them. Burghers were freely surrendering themselves with their arms, and returning to their farms again. Although as we’ve already heard, many of these surrendered arms were delapidated single shot elephant guns or even muskets. Surrendering Boers were burying their valuable Mausers and ammunition and biding their time.   In the south-east Rundle and Brabant slowly advanced, while the Boers who faced them fell back towards the Vaal River. In the west, Hunter had crossed the Vaal at Windsorton, and Barton's Fusilier Brigade had fought a sharp action at Rooidam, while Mahon's Mafeking relief column had slipped past the Boer flank, escaping the observation of the British public, but certainly not that of the Boers themselves.   The casualties in the Rooidam action were nine killed and thirty wounded, but the advance of the Fusiliers was irresistible, and for once the Boer loss, as they were hustled from kopje to kopje, appears to have been greater than that of the British.   The Boer forces fell back after the action along the line of the Vaal, making for Christiana and Bloemhof in the far north of Orange Free State republic. Hunter entered into the Transvaal in pursuit of them, being the first to cross the border, with the exception of raiding Rhodesians early in the war. Meanwhile Methuen was following a course parallel to Hunter but south of him, Hoopstad being the immediate objective. As Arthur Conan-Doyle writes in his history of the Boer War, “The little union jacks which were stuck in the war maps in so many British households were now moving swiftly upwards.”